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arXiv · 1912.02535

Is perturbation an effective restart strategy?

Aldeida Aleti·Mark Wallace·Markus Wagner
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Abstract

Premature convergence can be detrimental to the performance of search methods, which is why many search algorithms include restart strategies to deal with it. While it is common to perturb the incumbent solution with diversification steps of various sizes with the hope that the search method will find a new basin of attraction leading to a better local optimum, it is usually not clear how big the perturbation step should be. We introduce a new property of fitness landscapes termed "Neighbours with Similar Fitness" and we demonstrate that the effectiveness of a restart strategy depends on this property.

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Aldeida Aleti, Mark Wallace, Markus Wagner. 2019-12-05. Is perturbation an effective restart strategy?. https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.02535

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